"Today in Iraq", RiverSbend, etc
Yesterday evening I discovered a great new blog called Today in Iraq. It's written by a guy calling himself "yankeedoodle" who used to be a warrant officer in either the Marines or the Army (I forget which).
He just trawls the news sources for fabulous nuggets of news, info, and commentary on Iraq and presents them in a really clear way along with just the right amount of his own piquantly anti-Bushite commentary.
I just put a link to it onto the bar at the right.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere there's been a big campaign to stop some cranky elderly Bushophile called Troy who's been pretending to be Riverbend. He put an 'S' into the middle of her URL , made a template that looked just like hers, and then created this entire fake blog about how wonderful it is to be an Iraqi after the arrival of the US forces etc etc.
I did see his fake blog before Blogspot took it down (presumably, for violating their Terms of Service). He's been trying to get another one up, at www.riverbendsblog.blogspot.com, but evidently it's taking him some time to get it looking anywhere near authentic.
River herself has some nice commentary on it. But if you really want to max out out on the details of the counter-troy campaign, there's a whole other blog devoted solely to that.
Hi Helena,
I spotted your coments on the riverSbend faker on my daily patrols :)
I just wanted to make a few minor corrections to what you've said. Even though riverSbend is in flagrant and repeated breach of the Blogger TOS, and even though this has been brought to their attention by numerous people they have yet to yank it. The fake blog at riverSbendblog.blogspot.com still exists, though in a diluted form with many of the similarities to the original Riverbend removed.
The second blog you mention at riverSbendblog.blogspot.com also still exists but there's not much to it.
There is however a third at riverbendblogS.blogspot.com. This one has a comments section but weirdly every comment I post there seems to disappear in a couple of hours :)
There isn't much danger of anyone confusing any of this for the real Riverbend any more, though there remain some token similarities - most obviously in the names. But our man is still at it for reasons probably too obscure to be ascertained by any rational human. Sooner or later though I think someone instead of just changing their links so he stops stealing their graphics is going to subpoena him for breach of copyright or effective defamation and it will all end in tears.
In case anyone is interested, the riversbend blog lifted much of its material from http://healingiraq.blogspot.com , a bona fide Iraqi blog that is sure to seem annoyingly boosterish to the readers of this page. Go read it (or don't.)
www.riversbendblog.blogspot.com is disliked by all that is against a succesful extraction of Saddam and his party. It must be a sore spot for the Bush bashers. Every effort by the likes of Brian @ http://suzerainty.blogspot.com/ with his search for any helpful death threats have failed to bring it down.
Webster:
"www.riversbendblog.blogspot.com is disliked by all that is against a succesful extraction of Saddam and his party"
Emmm. It's disliked by Centcom and Fox News. Were they really "against a successful extraction of Saddam"? Damn terrorist-sympathisers!
Webster:
"Every effort by the likes of Brian @ http://suzerainty.blogspot.com/ with his search for any helpful death threats have failed to bring it down. "
Except perhaps for the most recent ones! The smearblog at riverSbendblog.blogspot.com has been out of action since Sunday.
Merry Christmas all!